‘A Letter To Elise’: Exploring The Cure’s most underrated gem
In Jean Cocteau’s Les Enfants Terribles, Elisabeth symbolises toxic entanglement and the yearning for liberation. Her dedication to Paul places her in a persistent web of manipulation, where emotional dysfunction ultimately leads to her tragic death at the hands of unrelenting expectation and miscommunication. The Cure’s Robert Smith might have taken some of Cocteau’s tones for ‘A Letter To Elise’, but the endless presentation of melancholic despair tackles isolation in ways Elisabeth could never bring herself to communicate effectively.
Communication is an interesting concept when analysing Smith’s lyricism. Often, he either tackles themes in a straightforward manner that belies the spaciousness of the broader arrangements or refrains from giving the game away with various poetic musings that resemble a detached, resigned train of thought. Few can grasp his concepts except for simplistic descriptions of darkness, but those in the same boat understand the certain comforting element of many of his words.
But his communication isn’t always transactional or even traditional, as evidenced by the correspondence aspect of ‘A Letter To Elise’. Loosely based on David Bowie’s ‘A Letter To Hermione’, Smith utilises the concept of openness and one-sided presentation to deliver an unreliable account of his despair, an effort fraught with vulnerability but in a way that masterfully pinpoints the pitfalls of linguistic inadequacy.
Just as Cocteau’s Elisabeth leans into her sinister complexities, Smith nails his ambiguity with purpose, taking advantage of the fragmentation of free-flowing thought to convey indirectness, uncertainty, and charred truths. It’s unclear why he has lost Elise, but his inability to connect provides a lack of clarity with the previous dynamics between the two, leaving only a sense of loss hinging on his desire to pinpoint what, exactly, this grief leaves him yearning for.
This comes across in the lyrics: “At least I’d lose this sense of sensing / Something else that hides away / From me and you there’re worlds to part / With aching looks and breaking hearts.” The following verse indicates a pairing that was once fated, but the heartbreak of time and circumstance prevents them from crossing paths in the way they both long for: “I stood and stared wide-eyed in front of you / And the face I saw looked back the way I wanted to / But I just can’t hold my tears away the way you do / Elise believe I never wanted this / Thought this time I’d keep all of my promises / Thought you were the girl I always dreamed about / But I let the dream go.”
“I let the dream go” suggests a mishap on Smith’s part, the inexplicable kind where distance unintentionally gets in the way of following the heart’s desires. However, the ode to resignation peers once again with lines like “Every time I try to pick it up like falling sand,” suggesting Smith’s persistent inability to communicate what he is thinking or feeling, which in turn places an immovable barrier between him and the person he regards his dream.
There are countless ways to read Smith’s communicative shortcomings, like the connection between self-destructiveness and human nature or the ever-important question about why people push others away when they could have had it all. Like Les Enfants Terribles, Smith’s surrender to the inevitability of change renders him forever entangled in the dilapidated constructs of pain and nostalgia. However, unlike Les Enfants Terribles, the quiet dissolution is more tragic than the dark grand gesture that categorises Elisabeth’s fate, as Smith’s passiveness lacks the dramatic finality of self-destruction, instead drifting into a quiet, unresolved sadness.
However, therein lies Smith’s superpower—with fragmented expression and a simultaneous comfort and contradiction of what it means to loathe the disruptiveness of your own actions, Smith faces up to the loss that comes with doing nothing in the face of romantic opportunity. His darkness pervades his various attempts at communication but rarely hits anything conclusive about what such macabre roads mean, just that the tolls they take are permanent and harsh markings of a lonely soul.
